Gotti

It's bad enough this film took four directors, 44 producers and eight years to make, but then adding actor Kevin Connolly turned novice director, and two novice screenwriters made this film unbearable.

The writing was a hack job and all over the place and the director clearly had issues directing his all-star cast, not to mention his poor choice of camera angles and annoying zoom in's that seemed to be filmed by a 10 year old with a 1990's HandyCam.

The story itself was however very interesting and Travolta and the rest of the cast did the best they could with the convoluted mess the novice film-makers handed them.

It's a very generous 6/10 from me.

Just an FYI any review over a 3 star is fake so after you get done reading the entire fake "Entourage" friend of Mr Director is that is even what you should call him read this real review who knows everything about John Gotti. What you see on screen is a iPhone googled TV script of no substance no direction with nothing new that I have not already heard on A&e or 60 minutes 20 times. I know for sure John Gotti is turning over in his grave from this garbage. If you watched A&E's Godfather and Son then you already saw this movie as this director pretty much sat down with John Gotti Jr or even watched that series and said I can make a movie about this. If you see at the end of that 4 part series you see them on set and you see the director with his IPhone taking to Travolata as I swear he shot this movie from his phone and used movieshop editing app. Travolta does a "nice" job as Junior says. I can't even go on to even waste more time thinking about this junk anymore as from the first minute I wanted leave as every real clip they showed you have seen they show over and over, nothing new. For the music I swear they went thru the list of songs that were cheap and just placed them in there with no meaning or syncope to the scene. Eric do us all a favor and go back to playing Mr Agent in Entourage and please don't get that world confused with the real movie making world and actually think you have a clue of what you were doing out there as the Gambino family Should hun you down for even putting this crap on screen hence the Crapper John tittle.

"Gotti" is not as bad as advertised. Do you like John Travolta? If so, this is his picture, and it would have been better if he had more control over it - particularly the editing. "Gotti" does not flow, it is episodic - choppy, as though several Gotti blackouts were slapped together, which offloads suspense and vastly reduces tension. Add to that the random addition of a loud music score. I say 'random' because the music is a bunch of '80's hits which do not provide context and weren't all hits. Plus, the music track was so loud as be intrusive.

Travolta carries the picture, and a big mistake was made in selecting the actor for the Junior Gotti part. Spencer LoFranco makes a nice appearance but lacks acting ability and does this movie no favors. The rest of the cast is good and come off as credible 'gangstas'. It is a good - but not great - picture which relies a lot on dialogue and needed more action and better editing.

Ok so before I start I have to say that this movie is only really going to make sense to those who lived through the life and times of John Gotti. If you are looking for a mob movie like Goodfellas this is not for you. This is a story that would be impossible to tell in 2 hrs but the film did the best it could and I respect that. First off, on a budget of about 10 million dollars I think that the producers did a hell of a job. Everyone who is critical of this film has to realize that it was made with not that much money. Travolta made this movie. His acting was great and it needs to be recognized. It lacks the starpower of other mob biopics etc. but the actors were okay. I did not really care for the part of John Gotti Jr. and feel like they could have gotten someone a little tougher looking to play the part. It almost was a character booster to clear junior Gotti at some point that I can agree with. All in all for what it is it is a decent movie. This movie never stood a chance being reviewed by critics. If you wanna see a good acting job by Travolta and you are interested in John Gotti you will be happy. If you don't know anything about the mob or any backstory on its history you might as well sit this one out.

The filmmakers had absolutely no idea what they wanted out of this movie. You can tell it took 44 producers and 8 years to make. Who was the protagonist? What style did they want to adopt? Is it a documentary? A character piece? A chronology of John Gotti's life? I couldn't tell. There was 4 time lines happening at once. Way to many names and places. It was simply boring and had no suspense. However, Travolta's performance wasn't bad, the script was. He definitly did the best he could with what he was given. Long story short, I have no more affection or knowledge of the Gotti family now than I did before the movie. Go watch the Sopranos instead.